The Lone And Level Sands Stretch Far Away
Shelley's famous sonnet "Ozymandias" tells the story of the visitor from an "antique land" to the ruins of a monument to an ancient king which lie strewn and decaying in the desert. The sonnet portrays the inevitability of change and the transient character of human effort in the face of nature. Remembering the desert, the traveler in Shelley's poem sees at the conclusion that "The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Shelley's poem and the bleak, endless sands of the desert came to mind in reading this new photographic history of Death Valley, published as part of the Images of America Series. More than prose could do, the photographs capture the harsh, barren unchanging character of Death Valley and its staunch resistance to human effort. Although a small band of Indians, the Timbisha Shoshone, has managed to survive in Death Valley over the centuries, Death Valley and its sands and winds remain as they have been in the face of strenuous human effort to exploit the land. The book shows the scenery of Death Valley, and the people who have been connected with it over the years. With all the attempts at mining or living in the desert, and its appeal to tourists and visitors, I left the book thinking of the conclusion of Shelley's sonnet.
One of the most romantic areas of the United States, Death Valley, located in Southeast California on, and slightly within, the Nevada border, is a forbidding land of contrasts in temperature, elevation, biological diversity, and rainfall. Death Valley became a National Monument in 1933 and a large National Park in 1994. Congress has designated most of Death Valley as a wilderness area. With all its bareness, Death Valley has always exercised an allure on Americans, either as the source of a get rich quick mining scheme or, more recently, as tourists. In 2007,over 700,000 people visited Death Valley National Park.
The author of this book, Robert Palazzo, is a student of Death Valley who used his own collection of photographs to prepare the volume. Palazzo has written extensively on Death Valley history, including a 1996 book on Darwin, California. Darwin is an old and violent mining town in Death Valley which still survives as a tiny community. It receives some discussion in this new book. Palazzo's book brought me to reflect on Death Valley and gave me a sense of the desert and its people.
In the five photographic chapters of the book, Palazzo offers portraits of the early would-be settlers in Death Valley, of the Shoshone inhabitants, and of the early borax mines, which became famous for their 20 mule teams. The second and third chapters shows the repeated, and mostly unsuccessful, attempts to mine silver, gold, copper, and other minerals in Death Valley. Unscrupulous promoters lured settlers to the region by questionable promises and by reports of great wealth. Violent mining towns grew briefly in the midst of Death Valley and quickly faded away into the sand when the alleged mining opportunities proved illusory. Railroads and even a monorail functioned for a time to perform the difficult tasks of transporting the minerals to market. Among other excellent photos, is a picture of an establishment called the Tecopa Mercantile Co. in the middle of the otherwise barren desert. (p. 40) For reasons that have never been explained, the owner of this establishment killed a patron before turning to take his own life in August, 1931.
Chapter 4 of Palazzo's book tells the story of "Death Valley Scotty" the most famous of a long line of con men who lured people and investors to Death Valley with the promise of wealth in nonexistent mines. Scotty maintained good relationships with many of the people whom he duped. Scotty is best-known because one of his investors, a wealthy Chicagoan named Albert Johnson constructed a castle in the northern reaches of Death Valley known as "Scotty's Castle". Scotty was invited to live in the castle but preferred to stay in an outbuilding Johnson built for him a few miles away. Scotty's Castle remains a Death Valley landmark and a popular tourist site.
The final chapter of the book expands upon the tourism industry in Death Valley. The fascination exerted by the Valley has long been fed by a stream of movies, television shows, and western novels. With the demise of mining, tourism to the area began in earnest in the 1930s and continues today with the administration of Death Valley by the National Park Service.
Before reading this book, I had never thought much about visiting Death Valley. I now have a yearn to see it. But as I indicated at the outset of this review, the strongest impression the book left on me was of Death Valley as a timeless place of shifting sands, carrying on inexorably in its own path and mocking the efforts of people who would exercise dominion or change its character. Shelley had already well understood Death Valley in 1818 when he wrote "Ozymandias".
